Spike Milligan "Gunner Who?" (BCA)
The second volume of Spike Milligan's war memoirs covers early 1943 during Operation Torch, with Spike's battery in Algeria and Tunisia. This volume is chock-a-block with entertaining anecdotes, good description, one or two very moving and poignant scenes, and some very, very bizarre interludes involving imagined dialogue between various German High Command officials, Mussolini, Churchill, even Evelyn Waugh and Randolph Churchill (this one was my favourite).
Some of the humour may be a bit funnier if you have some knowledge of military matters, like this joke:
Excerpt from the Regiment Diary: "Battery to move to hide west of Gafour."
"Why do they keep hidin' us," says Chalky. "I'm not ashamed of being a gunner."
(a hide = a place of concealment for troops)
But otherwise an ordinary sense of humour is all you need (and perhaps a tolerance for naughty barracks-room jokes). You may also pick up an interesting fact or two.
This book written by a comedy genius was both marvelously funny and desperately sad at times. I thoroughly enjoyed the bit about the gun going over the edge as well.
